Posts tagged with SPORTS

Gathered now in London, they are out to make the fun and games of the Olympics into something more, to take you beyond yourself, to lift you with a performance that is graceful or muscular or gymnastic or maybe even — for here the bar is highest — unforgettable. We are talking about sportswriters, a famously shopworn and bibulous lot whose calling the novelist
Richard Ford, himself a former sportswriter, lamented in his novel “The Sportswriter,” as “more like being a businessman, or an old-fashioned traveling salesman with a line of novelty household items, than being a genuine writer … there is very little that is ever genuinely creative to it at all.” Yet so often, the greatest spur to the imagination is limitation. What Mr. Ford’s sportswriter overlooked is that for really good writers, sports offer an opportunity to express all the pleasure and passion of life.

The Stone is a forum for contemporary philosophers and other thinkers on issues both timely and timeless.

The L.A. Times reviews Jim Holt’s “Why does the World Exist?” Holt is concerned, naturally enough, to address the question of the book’s title, but in an idiosyncratic and personal way (It’s subtitled “An Existential Detective Story”). He pursues the question—traditionally formulated by philosophers as, “Why is there something rather than nothing?” — through conversations with a range of eminent thinkers. Among them are the physicists Roger Penrose and Steven Weinberg, the novelist John Updike, the theologian Richard Swinburne and the philosopher John Leslie. Along the way, Holt suggests that cosmology is still conceptually stuck in its religious past, where the existence of the world is just assumed to require an explanation: “When we ask why there is something rather than nothing at all, we are, wittingly or not, heirs to a way of thinking that is a vestige of early Judeo-Christianity.” Also interesting is how the concepts of goodness and perfection end up figuring in Holt’s metaphysical inquiry: one critical modern source for this injection of normativity, says Holt, is Leibniz and his notion of our living, necessarily, in the best of all possible worlds.

Eyes on the Ball:Alva Noë talks sports at NPR. The discussion turns on the concept of seeing and how it bears on the difference between live and televised spectatorship. “One of the big mistakes we make,” Noë says, “is to think that seeing is optical. It isn’t. Seeing is a matter of understanding and caring.” Television directs the eye, projects a narrative onto the game that, though sometimes illuminating, takes the creative cognitive work involved in comprehension away from the spectator. Watching sports live is productively disordered; it forces us to exercise our capacities for seeing in the broader interpretive sense. Watching sports on television, though, within the structure chosen by the networks, dissipates the perceptual unruliness of direct (live) spectatorship. It grafts a fixed viewing experience onto the game, constricting the ways in which the game might be seen and hence understood. For Noë, if you want to see the game for yourself, you have to do it live.

Freedom at Work: Crooked Timber has posted a discussion of libertarianism’s difficulty coping with the systemic coercion enforced by private employers. Three cases are considered. (1) Coercion within the workplace: the strong limits on free speech or assembly, due process, or the right to a fair hearing before a panel of their peers. (2) Coercion outside the workplace: workers are sometimes secretly filmed, and have been fired or threatened with firing for supporting the wrong political candidates or critiquing certain religions on their blogs. (3) Coercion carried out by the workplace on behalf of the state: in the McCarthy era, private employers routinely investigated employees and would report those suspected of politically problematic behavior to the state. The responses of so-called Bleeding Heart Libertarians—a group of academics with libertarian sympathies—are discussed, but their arguments, according to the posters, do not manage to smooth over the thorny idea that employment is a genuinely voluntary matter.

Also:

At 3 A.M. Magazine, an interview with the young philosopher of language Alexis Burgess. A nice discussion of Kripke ensues.

The Stone is a forum for contemporary philosophers and other thinkers on issues both timely and timeless.

People often dismiss philosophical disputes as mere quibbles about words. But shifts in terminology can turn the tide in public debates. Think of the advantage Republicans gained when discussion of the Affordable Health Care Act became discussion of “Obamacare.” (Conversely, suppose we talked about “Bush-ed” instead of “No Child Left Behind”). Or consider how much thinking about feminism has changed with the demise of “men” as a term for people in general.

By lowering academic standards for athletes, universities help to marginalize the intellectual enterprise.

These thoughts about philosophy and language occur to me as a significant portion of our nation takes part in the mounting frenzy of “March Madness,” the national college basketball championship. Throughout the tournament, announcers and commentators careful enough to heed the insistence of the National Collegiate Athletic Association, will refer to the players as “student-athletes.”

But is this term accurate? Or should we perhaps leave it behind for a more honest and precise name?Read more…

Youth sports in the United States is a contradiction. In surveys, parents overwhelmingly say that youth sports should emphasize values like teamwork, honesty, discipline and fair play. But when adults are asked what values they think youth sports actually reinforce most, they say competitiveness and the importance of winning.

One of the key jobs of a coach today is reminding overzealous parents to keep the bigger picture in mind.

On Friday, I reported on the Positive Coaching Alliance, an organization that is working to bring youth sports more in line with the stated aspirations of the majority of the nation’s parents. (I started the column with three scenarios, and promised to provide responses to them from Jim Thompson, the founder of P.C.A. They are below.)Read more…

Imagine you’re coaching a big soccer game, against an undefeated team that has beaten your team in all your previous matches. Your 11-year-olds are playing well and are ahead. Then, in the closing minutes, the official makes a bad call that goes against you and, because of it, you lose. After the game, the parents of your players scream at the official. The kids are disappointed, looking up at you. What do you do?

Or you’re coaching tee-ball and one of your 5-year-old players has failed to get a hit so far. Now, he’s up again in a crucial situation and is nervous. All eyes are on him. His first swing misses high. The second misses low and knocks the ball off the tee. You call him over to offer some help. What do you say?

The meaning that coaches or parents help young people derive from sports can shape their lives.

Or you’re a parent and your 14-year-old daughter has just come off the basketball court. In the final seconds of the game, with her team behind by a point, she was fouled and awarded two free throws. What do you say if she missed both of them and her team lost? What if she triumphed? (Tune in on Wednesday for the answers!)

Coaches can be enormously influential in the lives of children. If you ask a random group of adults to recall something of significance that happened in their fourth or fifth grade classroom, many will draw a blank. But ask about a sports memory from childhood and you’re likely to hear about a game winning hit, or a dropped pass, that, decades later, can still elicit emotion. The meaning that coaches or parents help young people derive from such moments can shape their lives.Read more…

On Saturday, during halftime at the NCAA semi-finals, a reporter asked the Connecticut coach Jim Calhoun how his team had managed to build up a 10-point lead. He replied, more or less, We played good defense, although we didn’t get enough rebounds. What will you have to do in the second half?, the reporter queried brightly. Add rebounds to the good defense was the answer.

“And how are you going to do that?”

Calhoun smiled a little smile and said: “Get the ball off the boards.”

The reporter nodded as if she had just been told something, but of course she hadn’t been. Getting the ball off the boards is just a longer version of “get rebounds.” You get rebounds by getting rebounds, he was saying, while his smile was saying, “Why are you asking me such a dumb question?” She might have replied, “That’s my job,” by which she would have meant that it is her job to elicit formulaic and non-informative responses to formulaic and non-serious questions in the few seconds allotted to her by the network. It may have looked like an exchange of information, but in fact it was more like a ritual: I ask the expected empty question, you give the expected empty answer; just play the game.Read more…

“He is one who is divisive,” warned Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, a Democrat from Texas, on the House floor the other day. “He does not represent the fullness of appreciation … of all diverse backgrounds no matter what he pretends to say.” Who represents such a threat to the American way of life that she was forced to make this public denunciation — A Republican candidate? A controversial Federal court nominee? Michael Jackson’s doctor?

Did bogus quotes keep Limbaugh from becoming part-owner of an N.F.L. team?

No, it was Rush Limbaugh. His offense? In 2003, he said this about Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb: “The media has been very desirous that a black quarterback do well. There is a little hope invested in McNabb, and he got a lot of credit for the performance of this team that he didn’t deserve. The defense carried this team.” The clear and present danger? Limbaugh’s hope to become a minority shareholder of the St. Louis Rams.

So, did she make him “an American hero”? Not to N.F.L. Commissioner Roger Goodell, who agreed with the “divisive” charge and must have been mighty relieved when Limbaugh was dropped by the syndicate that’s bidding for the team. Not to DeMaurice Smith, the head of the N.F.L. players’ union, who encouraged “players to express their views.” And, unsurprisingly, not to Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, who wasted no time in getting in on the controversy.

There was one (sort of) surprise, however: Keith Olbermann, the liberal MSNBC host who also does studio commentary on NBC’s Sunday night football games, had this backhanded compliment: “There’re now gonna be character tests for sports owners? There’ll only be three of them left. Unless they beat the Vikings Sunday, as of next Thursday it will have been a full year since the Rams won a game. My God, if Limbaugh wants to buy them far be it for me to tell him he’s flushing his money down a rat hole.”

What happened here, and is happening elsewhere in American life, is that Mr. Limbaugh’s outspoken political conservatism is being deemed sufficient reason to ostracize him from polite society. By contrast, MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann, who fires off his own brand of high-velocity, left-wing political commentary but lacks Mr. Limbaugh’s sense of humor, appears weekly as co-host of NBC’s “Football Night in America.” We haven’t heard anyone on the right say Mr. Olbermann’s nightly ad-hominem rants should disqualify him from hanging around the NFL. Al Franken made it all the way to the U.S. Senate on a river of political vitriol.

But Rush Limbaugh gets hung out to dry by someone of Roger Goodell’s establishment prominence, and barely a soul from that same fastidious establishment has the courage to step forward to criticize it.

It is no secret that this country’s politics has become intense across the ideological spectrum. Rush Limbaugh lets his listeners blow off steam and then get on with the rest of their day. But if the people who claim to worry about such things want to see a truly angry right develop in this country, they should continue to remain silent while the left tries to drive Rush Limbaugh and others out of American political life. If that happens, the NFL by comparison will look like an afternoon tea.

And John Ziegler at Big Hollywood:

It frustrates the heck out of me that the Commissioner of the NFL has no fear at all of offending conservatives by bashing Rush. The reason? Largely because they tend to have day jobs and think for themselves, conservatives are really lousy at boycotts/protests. If a similar situation happened to say, Al Franken, the left would immediately be in attack mode and the apology would be immediate.

Quite simply, what is happening to Rush is beyond outrageous and frankly dangerous to the property and free speech rights of all Americans. This is so obvious that even Keith Olbermann (whose own appearance on Sunday night NFL telecasts should be seriously questioned) has somewhat supported Rush’s position here.

And yet my sense is that the general reaction from many conservatives is to not take this topic very seriously. Some seem to think the issue is frivolous or that Rush is doing this for publicity.

Folks, this is a huge deal. If Rush Limbaugh is not even allowed to be considered to be a minority owner of a property where his primary intent to help the community where he grew up, an incredibly dangerous precedent will have been set and the narrative that conservatism is synonymous with racist will be further cemented in the public consciousness.

Rush Limbaugh needs to fight this one right to the very end of the game, and we need to back him with everything we have.

If not, we will get what we deserve.

One thing Limbaugh didn’t deserve, apparently, were some of the quotes that were attributed to him by detractors. Particularly damning was this one, as cited by The St. Louis Post-Dispatch’s Bryan Burwell and repeated on CNN and elsewhere:

“I mean, let’s face it, we didn’t have slavery in this country for over 100 years because it was a bad thing. Quite the opposite: Slavery built the South. I’m not saying we should bring it back. I’m just saying it had its merits. For one thing, the streets were safer after dark.”

This one, reported on the Huffington Post, raised a few eyebrows as well: “You know who deserves a posthumous Medal of Honor? James Earl Ray [the confessed assassin of Martin Luther King]. We miss you, James. Godspeed.”

Offensive, to be sure — but there’s no evidence Limbaugh said any of it, and CNN, the Huffington Post and the Post-Dispatch have all issued retractions or editors’ notes. Burwell himself, however, doesn’t seem very contrite:

In an e-mail to the AP on Tuesday, Limbaugh said, “The totally made-up and fabricated quotes attributed to me in recent media reports are outrageous and slanderous.”

Fine, let’s play along for the time being and take him at his word that he was inaccurately quoted in the Huberman book. Heck, let’s go along for the full ride and believe that it was all a horrible “fabrication.”

So what are we left with?

Well, essentially, I think we just threw a deck chair off the Titanic.

There is still a huge pile of polarizing, bigoted debris stacked up on the deck of the good ship Limbaugh that he can’t deny or even remotely distance himself from.

Fox Sports’s Jason Whitlock seems to feel the quotes have enough truthiness to be fair game: “Limbaugh claimed on his radio show Monday that his staff could not find any proof that he ever joked about slavery. I’m sorry. Limbaugh doesn’t get the benefit of the doubt on racial matters.”

The Corner’s Mark Steyn summarizes this line of thinking: “Hey, let’s not get hung up on details. Just because nobody can find any evidence anywhere of Rush saying these ‘quotes’ doesn’t mean he didn’t say ’em.”

Adam Serwer of Tapped, looking at things Limbaugh did actually say, thinks this issue goes well beyond the radio host himself, and into conservatives’ racial views in general:

Limbaugh’s “political views” weren’t the problem. His racial views were the problem. The players and NFL officials who spoke up didn’t complain that Limbaugh was a Republican, they didn’t even complain about his “views.” They complained about actual things he said about black people that made him an inappropriate candidate to own a team in an organization with such a large contingent of African Americans.

The NFL is an organization made up of a lot of people who make a great deal of money — I would guess that on average, management and ownership probably skews Republican. But it’s also an organization made up of a lot of black people — and while the right was focused on debunking racist things Limbaugh didn’t say, they pretty much ignored Limbaugh’s record of racist commentary, which includes not only a habit of comparing black athletes to gang members but a general hostility toward black people. Limbaugh only recently suggested that having a black president encouraged black children to beat up white children — he’s also compared President Obama’s agenda to “slavery reparations,” used epithets to reference his biracial background, and compared Democrats responding to the concerns of black voters to rape. In the fevered swamps of National Review, where they’re still defending William F. Buckley’s support of segregation, this kind of behavior is described as Martin Luther King like.

On the one hand, there’s the general anxiety on the right that comes from the recognition that one can’t actually treat black people this way and expect there not to be social consequences. On the other, there’s actual bewilderment about the very concept of racism — conservatives understand in the abstract that racism is bad, but they seem incapable of identifying actual racist behavior. Instead, because (a) racism is bad and (b) liberals are bad (c) racism is a quality possessed by liberals. By definition, conservatives cannot be racist, because they are good, unlike liberals, and therefore nothing Rush Limbaugh says is racist. Moreover, while liberals have sometimes intimated racial motivation for conservative criticism where there isn’t any, conservatives have refused to recognize when attacks on the president become attacks on black people. Calling the president “an angry black guy” is one of those times.

While Serwer thinks conservatives can’t recognize racism, Andy McCarthy of the Corner thinks anything they say will be construed as such:

Everytime one of these stories comes up, which is all too often, I can’t help but think it says a lot more about us than whoever happens to be in the cross-hairs. Why do Sharpton and Jackson have careers? Why aren’t they shown the door for serial racism and dishonesty? Why does anyone give a damn what they say? Why does the press treat them like they matter when they’re a walking, talking parodies?

In the 1970s, I went to a highly integrated, all-boys high school (Cardinal Hayes) in the Bronx. It was one of the best experiences in my life, and I had great friendships with all manner of guys, because from the first day they treated us like we were all “Hayesmen” — not white guys, black guys, Spanish guys, Chinese guys, etc. We were encouraged to see each other as peers, not tribesmen. Of course there was intra-group affinity along ethnic and racial lines — there always is. But there wasn’t a lot of tension. There was some — again, there always is — but there was no special treatment and no pressure for enforced separateness. We laughed at each other’s expense (ethnic and racial jokes were not cause for banishment from society back then) and competed on a level playing field of merit. Everyone was treated like he belonged, if you did something good it was yours, and if you screwed up it was on you, not your heritage.

That’s how Rush treats people — in the Martin Luther King aspiration that the content of one’s character is what matters, not the color of one’s skin. Yet, in the media narrative, he’s somehow the one who’s got a race issue — and the guys who trade on race, live and breathe it 24/7, are held up as our public conscience. The Left calls this “progress.” I call it perversion.

There’s only one way this nonsense ever goes away: When we say “enough!” and tell the race-baiters their time is up. It’s too much of an industry, so it probably won’t happen tomorrow. But the Sixties ideal is crashing and burning before our very eyes, and I think it’ll take a lot of its warped obsessions down with it.

Tsquare at RedState, however, seems to think these “warped obsessions” are the wave of the future, and I’ll leave you with his (her?) poetic vision of our imminent liberal dystopia:

Earlier this evening, as most of you now know, one of our own, Rush Hudson Limbaugh, while taking withering fire, crashed and burned.

Tonight, Rush is no longer ‘just’ a radio personality.

Tonight, Rush is no longer ‘just’ a NFL owner denied

Tonight, Rush is us. And we are him.

Tonight Rush became the metaphor for all of us… every man woman and child in this great nation of ours.

The enemy of this great nation, the enemy of you and me, Rush’s enemy… those on the left, inside and outside of this nation abhor success… and when faced with it will destroy it… by any and all means possible.

We all have our dreams in life… such as they might be. Rush dreamed of being an owner in the NFL.

Tonight the left proved that they will stop at nothing to end our dreams. Our dreams of success and happiness devastate their need to dominate and control you and me… and well everything and everyone.

Chrysler bondholders

GM dealers

Bankers and stockbrokers

Small business owners

Medical Doctors

Oppressed people wanting freedom around the world

The left can not and will not allow anyone to realize their dreams

Tonight a light went out… a dream died… it died from political correctness

Tonight we are under withering fire, we on the right those in the middle,

Tonight our values are under withering fire, those thoughts ideas and dreams that made this great nation are under withering fire

Will your light of your dreams be next?

Will my dreams be next?

(Note: Limbaugh now has a reply to his critics at the Wall Street Journal: “intimidation tactics are working and spreading, and they are a cancer on our society.”)

Did the president err in backing Chicago’s bid? And does the decision mean that the world still dislikes America?

“It would be easy to read too much into the rejection of Chicago as the site of the 2016 Summer Olympics despite the president’s personal lobbying junket to Copenhagen in order to plead the city’s case before a meeting of the International Olympic Committee,” writes Rick Moran at Pajamas Media. Then, naturally, he goes on to read a great deal into it: “He placed the prestige of his presidency directly on the line and failed. That’s the bottom line. He gambled with the one thing no president should ever gamble with unless the stakes are much higher than his hometown getting the Olympic games.”

Obama received a nasty rebuff and a stern reminder that the rest of the world doesn’t necessarily care what he thinks. Chicago is out of the Olympics bidding process–in the first round. Why did Obama invest so much personal capital and time for this? Well, he simply can’t help himself. It’s the same force of ego that drives him on to those TV talk shows again and again and that imagines that a grand speech with no content and no appeal outside his base will be a game changer on health-care reform.

It’s also another reminder that, apparently, there isn’t anyone influential enough in the White House to keep the president from embarrassing himself. No one to say, “Enough with the talk shows.” No one to explain that presidents should not invest their personal credibility and standing to beg the IOC on behalf of his hometown. No one, unfortunately, to direct him back to the job of making timely, forceful decisions to defend America’s real interests. Not an interest in getting the Olympics, but the interests in defanging Iran, in maintaining robust alliances with friendly democracies, in executing a winning strategy in Afghanistan, and in readjusting domestic policy away from job-killing measures and toward job-creating ones.

Obama didn’t get the Olympics. He did get a slap in the face. Maybe he will learn something about multilateral institutions. At the very least, he may want to consider finding some advisers who will tell him to stop doing such silly things.

This line of thinking isn’t confined to conservative pundits. When asked about it by Politico, Rosabeth Moss Cantor of Harvard Business School answers with a question of her own: “Could this be one more sign that the U.S. Is no longer world champion? Or that the Obama magic that so captivated people outside the U.S. has frayed at the edges internationally too? Perhaps I’m reading too much into a complex decision comparing cities. But the President isn’t a Mayor and shouldn’t have taken this risk and squandered credibility when he needs some national victories in Congress on health. He needed to look like a winner, and now he’s personally associated with losing.”

It’s not often that conservatives celebrate the U.S. losing out to countries like Brazil and Spain, especially not when the loss involves a prominent event like the Summer Olympics. But when the International Olympic Committee eliminated Chicago as a potential host for the 2016 games in the first round of voting on Friday, the right broke out the champagne …

A persistent theme in the taunts has been the suggestion that if Obama can’t bring home the Olympics, he won’t be able to rein in Iran, either. At the Corner, one of the National Review’s blogs, John J. Miller wrote, “If he can’t work his personal magic with the Olympians, why does he expect it to work with the Iranians?” Miller’s colleague Ramesh Ponnuru quipped, “I’m sure that Obama will be a lot more persuasive with the Iranians.”

Miller was on a similar wavelength with another poster at the Corner, Jonah Goldberg. At nearly the same time, the two joked that the IOC must be racist for voting Chicago out, mocking claims that opposition to Obama is motivated in part by race. “Frankly I am stunned that all my colleagues can do is score cheap political points against Obama’s failed effort to win the Olympics for the United States. Where is the outrage at the IOC’s transparent racism?” Goldberg wrote.

There is at least one veteran Republican operative out there asking his ideological allies not to celebrate a U.S. defeat, though. On Twitter, Scott Stanzel, who served as press secretary on President George W. Bush’s reelection campaign and as a deputy press secretary in his White House, said, “Note to GOP officials/consultants — resist the temptation to pile on about Chicago losing the Olympic bid just because Obama made the pitch.”

(If you’re interested in the sorts of arguments against the Chicago bid that involve hard numbers and exposing cronyism, Koppelman’s colleague Edward McClelland has a pretty good one.)

Some on the left just think the whole Chicago pitch was misguided. Sandy Levinson, writing at Balkinization, notes this passage from The Times’s coverage:

“One of the legacies I want to see is a reminder that America at its best is open to the world,” [President Obama responded,] before adding that the White House and State Department would make sure that all visitors would feel welcome.

No doubt the President was sincere, but it’s been quite a while since America has been “at its best,” thanks to the Bush Administration. Why would anyone believe that the United States will indeed “make sure that all visitors would feel welcome,” given our track record over the past eight years with regard to burdens placed on anyone who seeks a visa, the possibility of inquisitions (and being turned back) even upon arrival, vulnerability to “terrorist lists” that have a proven degree of unreliability, etc.? This is really a stunning rebuke of the United States, given the willingness of both Obamas to put themselves on the line. He’s going to have to generate far more “change everyone can believe in” before the US will be chosen as a venue for an event like the Olympics (and properly so). And how confident can we be that he will be willing to take on the Glenn Becks, Rush Limbaughs, and other Republican demagogues (many of them in the House and the Senate) to reduce the burdens placed on foreign visitors?

* The United States recently invaded another country under false pretenses and against the dictates of international law. No country doing that should be given the Olympics for a long, long time.

* The Unites States failed to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, unlike virtually every other country in the world. Why the one country unwilling to protect the planet from climate disaster should be allowed to host the premier event of international cultural co-operation is difficult to fathom.

* Other examples of our lack of international co-operation include extraordinary rendition, the use of torture, not being a signatory to the land mine treaty, and the Guantanamo Bay detention facility. There is a very long list of our refusals to accept international standards for pretty much anything.

The fact is that we don’t deserve to host such an important international event of cultural cooperation until we actually start cooperating with the rest of the world. In fact, I am pretty sure that is exactly why we didn’t get the 2016 Games.

As Robert Draper’s brilliant portrait of Valerie Jarrett a few months ago made clear for the first time, there is considerable tension between her and the other key members of Obama’s team, including Rahm and Axelrod. Jarrett, because she’s such a good friend of both Obamas, can get the president’s ear on just about any topic she wants, at any time …

The Olympic bid has been Jarrett’s project. She’s been running a special unit devoted to it from inside the White House, the first time a presidency has devoted so much effort to such a bid. Jarrett, of course, breathes and bleeds Chicago – she’s passionate about it, as are the Obamas – particularly Michelle of course, who grew up there and associates it with her parents (she mentioned her late father in this morning’s speech to the committee). Also, American bids have to be entirely financed privately, and Jarrett is peerlessly well-connected in Chicago’s business community.

Jarrett will have been the one who persuaded Obama that it was worth betting some presidential capital on this and making the trip. And I suspect that she she did so against the advice of Rahm and Ax, who are probably thinking that with Afghanistan, healthcare, and the economy all at high levels of intensity, this is a gamble the president can do without.

Outside of the White House bubble, do we think the vote marks the end of the so-called Obama Effect? “Only if that ‘effect’ entails moving mountains,” says Kevin Sullivan of RealClearWorld. “Or in this case, an Olympic committee.” He continues:

I don’t know if Obama’s foreign policy vision was ever quite so ambitious as his domestic campaign rhetoric. I think success for Obama abroad will come primarily by grounding the more ambitious (and often careless) adventurism of his predecessor. This means, among other things, sticking to the pragmatic realism that underpins his policies.

But I believe the President’s foreign policy appeal is actually the inverse of his domestic one. Yesterday’s statement on Iran is a good example: reserved, cautious and realistic. He won’t win too many points for that from his political rivals, but it means a heck of a lot more than some trivial Olympics appeal.

But Jay Cost of Sullivan’s parent blog, RealClearPolitics, thinks the Copenhagen politicking was of Olympian importance:

This is the permanent campiagn. We have talked about its imminence for years. Well, now it’s here and this is what it looks like. This is what a President does in it. Previous Presidents would only put themselves out there in this kind of diplomatic situation if there was no more campaigning, lobbying, and cajoling to be done. But this President sees himself above all as the chief campaigner, lobbyist, and cajoler…

I, for one, am exhausted by our new permanent campaign. That might sound strange coming from somebody who runs the Horse Race Blog, but it is true. The ominpresence of the Obama campaign apparatus is, frankly, wearing me down. I can’t get away from him or it, even in my down times …

It’s not simply because enough is enough, though that is part of it. It’s also because he is different now. He holds the executive authority of the United States within his person at this moment, and it is sobering to see the holder of such vast power on the cover of a magazine urging us to follow his fitness regime. By continuing the permanent campaign into his tenure so thoroughly, he has given new meaning to the phrase “big government.” When he is on the cover of Men’s Health telling us how to work out, in a certain sense, the federal government’s executive authority is on the cover of Men’s Health telling us how to work out.

And so it continues today. What should have been a story about Chicago – or better yet, Rio (good for you, Rio!) – is now a story about … Obama. Of course. Because just about everything in the public sphere must, must become a story about Obama. Because Obama injects himself and his campaign appartus/mindset/worldview into everything. And so, in this case, what would otherwise have been a “mere” rejection of Chicago and Mayor Daley has now become a rejection of the entire country. Why? Because of his decision to perpetuate the permanent campaign while holding the power of the executive.

That may be stretching things a bit, but there’s certainly no doubting that this is a disappointing result for the president. On the positive side — and perhaps to the chagrin of Gore Vidal and NewsMax — at least he managed to leave the country and return without facing a coup.

The broadcaster college basketball fans loved to hate: Billy Packer, who worked 34 consecutive Final Fours as a broadcast analyst, has been jettisoned by CBS as its lead analyst for men’s college basketball. Salon’s King Kaufman says Packer “is an institution behind the microphone, but it’s hard to think of another sports broadcasting figure of Packer’s stature and tenure who’s inspired as little affection as he has.” Kaufman also writes:

You can talk to a lot of college basketball fans about Billy Packer before you find one who enjoys his work. He’s a sharp analyst, but he’s also grouchy, imperious and overly fond of his native Atlantic Coast Conference, where Packer was a point guard for Wake Forest in the early ’60s. It’s a great basketball conference, but Packer’s job was color commentator, not ACC public relations man.

Farewell, Roger Federer? Sonny Bunch, an assistant editor for The Weekly Standard who blogs for the magazine Doublethink, thinks Federer’s loss to Rafael Nadal at Wimbledon is evidence that “Federer is done.”

“Now, with a player of Federer’s undeniably amazing talent, done is a relative term; when I say ‘done’ I mean he’ll probably win two or three more majors but he’ll never dominate the game like he did for the four seasons prior to this one, four seasons in which he won 11 of the 16 major tournaments,” Bunch writes. “Neither [Bjorn] Borg nor [Pete] Sampras at their most dominant averaged 2 majors a year over their best four seasons. In the open era, no one has dominated the game like Federer and it’s unlikely anyone will again. ‘Anyone’ includes Roger Federer.” Bunch later adds:

But why now? Why this year? I really think age is a large part of it. With a few exceptions, the shelf-life of a top-level tennis player is exceedingly short. Sampras hit his wall at 26: though he’d go on to win four more majors after hitting the big 2-5, three of those were at Wimbledon (on the surface he and he alone dominated for almost the entirety of the ’90s), and the last, at the U.S. Open, came after a two year stretch of early exits and in a tournament where only 3 of the top 16 seeds made it into the quarterfinals. His dominant years were at the age of 21-25. Bjorn Borg’s dominant years: 22-25. John McEnroe’s best years: 22-25. Etc.